Archive for January, 2012

I’m sure that if I were to open a poll asking you to give your opinion of the world’s greatest ventriloquist, I would see names such as Edgar Bergen of Charlie McCarthy fame. Or Jeff Dunham with his menagerie of characters. Or, perhaps, Terry Fator and his cool singing puppets…

But what about Øbama’s teleprompters? I mean, look at the absolutecontrol they have over that puppet? And, with most ventriloquists, you can at least see their throats working as they make their dummy speak. Not the teleprompters – nary a twitch!

“I don’t quarrel with anyone who wants to exercise their Constitutional right to legally own a gun,” [Detroit] Police Chief Ralph Godbee said. “Nor do I have any quarrel with anybody that exercises their Constitutional right to carry a gun. But is this the best mix? Is legality really the question we need to raise right now? From a practical standpoint, are there too many guns in the city of Detroit? My answer is ‘yes.'”

And I agree that there are too many handguns on the streets of most major US cities. Where we fundamentally differ is where I draw the line defining “too many” and where most politicians and law enforcement personnel draw that line.

To me, in a room full of people carrying firearms, the “one too many” is that person who would use the firearm they are carrying to commit a crime. All too often, our government sees the “too many” as those who are not in law enforcement.

There are several glaring fallacies in the platform of those who would limit your right to keep and bear firearms in the interest of “the public good”. First is that laws to eliminate or limit firearm ownership do not constrain those who do not have any respect for the law. I’ll offer that these are the problem in the first place! Unless some magical process was developed to cause every firearm on the planet to magically vanish; to cause charcoal, sulfur, and potassium nitrate to become noncombustible, and to prevent bored out steel rods, pins, and springs from being combined into a basic percussion fired weapon, those who wish to pursue their use will always find a way. But, even if this magic were to be accomplished, the criminal element will always seek the upper hand. After this hypothetical gun control magic must necessarily come similar archery control, knife control, heavy object control…

Next is the ludicrous posturing that it is the police’s job to protect you – call 911. To paraphrase one of the fools on the hill, have someone tell you you should call 911 when you have a 200 pound man standing over you telling you to submit. “Could you hold on a sec? I’m dialing 911…”

Let me be clear: the best manner of gun control is that which comes with regular practice. We have laws on the books regarding crimes involving firearms. Enforce those; make them a deterrent rather than a joke. Relief by calling upon 911 can take minutes – actually, hours in Detroit. Relief by calling upon a practiced and handy 1911, however, is immediate.

UPDATE:CBS has pulled the video, which featured a young black man who, in his appearance before Judge Judy over an unrelated issue, blithely outlined how he was gaming the welfare system. Since this exposé does not comport with CBS’s obvious political bias, I am not surprised they pulled it. Further, since my link was not from a CBS-affiliated site, it suggests that they were aggressively asserting their copyright as well – also not surprising, given their bias. In any case: if I find another version live online, I will refresh the link so your head can explode, too…

So, while wandering about the Detroit Auto Show, the pageant of the industry he would destroy, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood touted the setting of the MY2025 CAFE at 54.5 as “a huge, huge achievement.”

This is indicative of the problem with the career politicians in WDC: SETTING of CAFE to an outrageously pie-in-the-sky number is clearly NOT what most working-class bums would characterize as an achievement – unless you think of achievement as the potential destruction of an industry with the commensurate loss of a huge number of jobs.Of course such consideration never enter into the politics of environmental activists cum politicians.

ACHIEVEMENT will come about when, through engineering, innovation, and invention, the automakers actually get their fleets within the standard. Unfortunately, with a fleet average set this high, achievement of this standard will likely come at a huge cost, measured in destruction of human lives, jobs, and freedoms.

Aside from the electrification of the fleet which will drive the cost of personal transportation out of reach of the vast majority in the U.S. (a loss of freedom), the only other option is reduction in weight. Automotive weight reduction leads to vehicles impractical for families, agriculture, and industry – think SMART car or similarly-sized vehicles, and larger vehicles made from lightweight, but more brittle materials. I would personally like to be in neither during any collision.

We’ve all heard, seen, or read about the outrage over Øbama’s “recess” appointments. What seems to be missing is any information about what the people we elected to congress are doing about it? You know: those other people who took an oath to uphold our constitution? What of the Supreme Court? I think they took a similar oath. What are they doing about it?